Vagner Rocha On Kicking AJ Agazarm: ‘Maybe I Taught Him A Lesson Today’

Vagner Rocha is sorry about kicking AJ Agazarm in the back at their main event match at Fight to Win Pro (F2WPRO) on Saturday.

Kind of sorry, that is.

In an interview with FloGrappling, the Brazilian-born Florida resident and BJJ black belt said that, while it wasn’t his intention to offend anyone, he was there to fight.

I’m sorry to anybody that got offended by my actions today. It wasn’t my intentions to offend anybody, but at the same time, I’m here to fight. If you ain’t ready to fight, don’t come to fight me.

Earlier in the interview he made it clear that AJ was not part of that list of people he felt sorry for.

In fact, not only is Rocha less than apologetic to his opponent, he even thinks some good came out the illegal kick that got his decision win overturned to a no-contest.

I have some resentment towards him, but I didn’t let it carry into the match. And the first reach out kind of hit him nice and he turned his back to me and I’m a little bit old school. This is a fight at the end of the day, you know? Don’t turn your back on somebody. I don’t know where he learned his self-defense or his martial arts that he’s learned, but I would never teach any of my students to turn their back on somebody. So, maybe I taught him a lesson today.

Yet in a later Instagram post, Vagner seemed to recognize that kicking AJ Agazarm off of the mat was not the “best decision,” even though he did not believe it should “define the match.”

Some people may not understand the kill or be killed mentality of a fighter in that situation. Emotions run high and the testosterone is flowing, which is not always resultant in the best decision making. I could have kept it on the mat the whole time and feel that a one second decision does not define the match that lasted ten minutes.

Vagner did, however, say he would apologize to the Stolberg family, whose table he pushed Agazarm into.

Chris Zahar is the editor of the Jiu-Jitsu Times. He is a professional journalist living in Taiwan, and his work has appeared in magazines such as Yahoo Sports and FHM. He is a second-degree black belt in karate and a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He can be reached on Twitter at @ChrisZahar.